Actually it's crystal clear that it's his plan because if you don't follow his plan you die and become a dominated mindflayer. And if you do follow his plan the Absolute gets killed, everyone becomes free and ends up living a happily ever after.
Um? No, you don't die and become a mindflayer, you free Orpheus, you go whoop the Absolute's butt, and there is a big party. Have you forgotten this ending?
So what kind of a stupid ass plan would it be for the Absolute to have her own agent deny her the only weapon that can resist her and then end up sabotaging her and getting herself killed through her own agent following her own plan? He even steps in to save you before she turns your brain into mush after doing it to Gortash, even says herself that she deliberately set the Emperor free so that he thinks he broke free on his own, which shocks him greatly.
I truly do not understand where this entirely illogical theory comes from when the story is quite coherent, logical and simple.
My friend, you're skipping a page here... Freeing Orpheus reveals a whole different set of circumstances in which the Emperor's story completely unravels. And I have done an ending where I didn't free Orpheus, didn't become partially Illithid and didn't give the emperor the stones, That was my first play through tho and 6 months ago, I don't recall the exact details of how that was done.
Regardless, betraying the Emperor is NOT fatal, there are absolutely multiple paths there.
Events of the Orpheus ending create a situation where the Emperor had to be lying, there is no other excuse for his JOINING the brain, which would otherwise be out of character for him. Larian chose to write that as an alternate timeline or something, but his behavior in that ending lays bare that he had to be lying the whole time (which is something that doesn't happen in the endings where you do not betray him).. In effect the story's universe changes at that juncture, and the facts of the matter fundamentally are not the same as the endings that occur if you stick with the Emperor.
